Piers Anthony - On a Pale Horse

"Fate might know," Luna said.

"And there was a giant flying carpet taking off from Washington, carrying seventy-nine people south. Ice formed on its forward fringe and interfered with its levitation-spell, and it grazed a bridge and crashed into the Potomac River, killing ninety percent of the passengers. I was there for a client and saw the crash — and it was so unnecessary. The simplest deicing spell would have prevented — "

"I thought they always deiced large carpets in winter."

"They do. But they used a weak one this time, and the ice built up again more rapidly than expected, and no one checked. All those innocent people killed — and I thought why, why? If it made any sense at all, maybe I could accept it. But this was mere caprice! All those people subjected to the indignity of meaningless termination, their families saddened — I don't know whether I can continue to be a part of this."

"I would justify it if I could," Luna said. "My father believed there was a purpose in death, however untimely it might seem. He said there was always a rationale, if we could only see it."

"What possible rationale for children killed by an explosion, or families smashed in a carpet crash?" he demanded bitterly. "Can God have any hand in this?"

"I don't know. My father had a dream of a benevolent universe, wherein Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell are all necessary aspects of a Divinely functioning whole. He would have believed that there was a specific reason for every out-of-turn death, and that Fate had directed each person to be on that particular carpet."

"Do you believe that?"

She sighed. "My soul is burdened with evil, and my faith is weak. I don't have the information my father had."

"You are mortal, like me," he said. "You are not provided with ready answers."

"All too true. But I still think we can work out a rationale, if we try. How, exactly, did you get to be Death?"

"I shot my predecessor," Zane admitted. "I was going to suicide, because I'd been gypped out of a girl — a girl like you, beautiful and wealthy and loyal — but when I saw Death, I killed him instead. Then Fate came and told me I had to be the new Death. So I was."

"A girl like me," Luna said. She had continued adjusting herself and now was verging from lovely to ravishing, approaching the physical appeal she had had on their last meeting.

"Yes. Not only pretty, but pure — "

Luna choked on a fit of laughter. "How little you know about women!" Zane shrugged. "I've known ordinary women. But — "

"Death came for you personally," she cut in with a feminine non sequitur. "That means you were half evil."

"Yes. I never claimed — "

"If you were to pass your definition gems near me, you would find me much the same. My outer form is as fair as nature and cosmetic magic can make it; my inner personality is suspect. Don't put me on any pedestal, Zane. I can match you evil for evil."

"Oh, I'm sure — "

"No, you aren't. But you might as well find out. That should settle whatever my father had in mind." She got up and strode across the room, lithe and purposeful. Her housecoat seemed to have changed along with her attitude and now looked more like a gown. Whatever magic she had wasn't all magic, he realized. "Come to the stone chamber."

Zane followed her, anticipating some kind of crypt hewn out of bedrock, but the chamber turned out to be a bright wood-paneled room arranged like a museum, with small stones of every type set out on shelves and in cabinets. "These — are magic?" he asked, amazed.

"Certainly. That was my father's business-enchanting stones. Some of the most intricate magic in the world is concentrated here. The stones you use to analyze souls may have been Crafted by my father, as he was one of perhaps only four living people capable of that precision of magic. He surely knew more about you than you knew about yourself. That's why we need to get to the bottom of this. I confess I'm not keen on any relationship with you, and your interests obviously would have preferred to focus elsewhere, but my father selected you and me for reasons we are bound to fathom before we part. We can't afford to take the risk of rejecting what he set up unless we first understand the reason for it. If we discover a continuing relationship is necessary, we can grit our teeth and use the Love stone to facilitate — "

"I doubt I need a Love stone," Zane said. "All I need is to look at you closely."

She shrugged that off as if irrelevant. "But first we must separate reality from illusion. My father said that a person is best defined by the nature of his evil. His own evil was in dealing with Satan for the sake of increased magic power. Without demonic help, he would have been merely a world-class Magician instead of a grand master. So he is defined by his lust for complete professionalism, and I know that damned him, but I also respect him for it."

"Yes," Zane agreed, impressed. He had heard that a world-class Magician could virtually demolish a city with a single fission-spell. What could a grand master do? Zane didn't know and suspected no one else knew, because of the secretive nature of such Magicians.

"Now you and I will exchange evils in the presence of these stones and see what we shall see." Luna lifted several gems from their casings.

"I really don't understand — "

"Hold this stone in your right hand; it glows only when you tell a lie." She handed him a dusky diamond. "And this in your left; it is a Sinstone, like the one you use to evaluate souls."

Zane held the stones, not at all certain he liked this. Luna took similar stones in her hands. "I will lead the way, so you can see how it's done," she said.

"Urn," Zane said noncommittally.

"My name is Venus," she announced. Her Truthstone flashed warningly. "I mean Luna." The stone remained dark. "I only did that to prove it's working," she explained, and the stone did not object. "Now test yours."

"My name is Jehosephat," Zane said, and saw his own Truthstone flash. "Zane." The glow faded.

Luna took a deep breath that did things for her torso. She looked pained. "Oh, I don't like this! Why am I doing it?" she asked rhetorically.

"Let's not do it," Zane said. "I don't want to know your secrets." But his Truthstone flashed.

"I have fornicated with a demon of Hell," Luna announced.

Zane's jaw dropped.

She faced him defiantly. "There, I did it. Note that my Truthstone did not glow — but my Sinstone brightened." She gestured with her left hand, showing how the stone had come to life. "Whose Sinstone gets brightest — that's the most evil one of us."

Zane swallowed. How had he gotten into this? But Luna's sincere discomfiture made her prettier than ever, and somehow he felt he had to prove she was better than he. "I embezzled funds from my employer," he said. His Sinstone brightened, but not as much as hers.

"I am worse than you," Luna said, like a child teasing.

"I never had the opportunity to make it with a lady demon," he pointed out. But he remained shaken by her revelation. She looked so innocent!

"And I never had an employer from whom to embezzle. Opportunity is only part of it." She took another breath. "I practiced black magic."

"I thought that was your father, not you." But he saw that her right stone was dark, while her left one had brightened another notch. She was guilty, all right, though he, personally, didn't care about black magic. Magic was magic, wasn't it? What did it really matter what color it was?

She was waiting for his second confession. "I gambled away almost everything I had, including friendships."

"Gambling is not really evil," she said. But his Sinstone had brightened significantly.

"I need to clarify that," he said grimly. He understood why Luna had found this so difficult! "There was a girl who loved me — who said she did — but I wouldn't marry her, because she wasn't beautiful and because she was poor. I wanted to marry wealth. She — later I learned she committed suicide. That was the main friendship I gambled away — gambling on a richer one."